Asian amber yields oldest known bee
By Sid Perkins
A tiny chunk of amber from Southeast Asia contains the remains of a bee that’s at least 35 million years older than any reported fossil of similar bees.
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The amber nodule that entombs the newly described Melittosphex burmensis was among 100-million-year-old rocks in northern Myanmar. The male bee measures nearly 3 millimeters long, about the size of a modern-day sweat bee, says Bryan N. Danforth, an entomologist at Cornell University.